255 [Senate 



THE WHEAT-FLY.* 



Although several facts in the habits and economy of the wheat-fly 

 had occurred to my notice at sundry times since its appearance in 

 this vicinity, yet as ray leisure for studies of this nature was wholly 

 engrossed in other departments of the science of entomology, these 

 facts had been observed in too cursory a manner to be of material 

 value in preparing an account for the public eye. It has not been 

 until the present year, that I have made this and its allied species 

 my particular study. And as some few interesting points still remain 

 undetermined, ere a perfectly complete history of this insect can be 

 given, I should be inclined still to defer preparing a paper upon this 

 subject, but that I deem some of the observations already made of 

 too much importance to be longer withheld, and am moreover very 

 well aware that if no writer ventured to appear before the public 

 until his investigations were so complete in every particular that he 

 could exhaust the subject on which he wrote, very little would be 

 published, and the world would have but a small fraction of that 

 amount of information which it now possesses. 



It is necessary for me further to premise, that although we have 

 two distinct species of wheat-flies, as will be fully shown in the 

 sequel of this paper, to wit, the clear-winged wheat-fly (Cecidomyia 

 Tritici of Kirby) and the spotted-winced wheat-fly, which has hitherto 

 remained a nondescript ; yet as nothing is yet known of the habits 

 and transformations of one of these as distinct from the other, through 

 the body of this article the common name " wheat-fly" will be em- 

 ployed for convenience as referring to both these species. Future 

 researches, however, may detect dissimilarities in their habits, and 

 show that portions of the following account are true only with regard 

 to one of these. 



* The following essay originally appeared in the American Quarterly Journal of 

 Agriculture and Science, vol. ii, number 2; to the editors of which our acknowledg- 

 ments are also due for the illustration with which it is accompanied. The essay has 

 been revised, and new paragraphs added by the author. 



